I made this picture (picture 1 RAW)… then worked it over in “lightroom” and delivered it since it looked pretty good (picture 2)… then the art director calls and says “… ya know… I know you can do better.. this looks like crap… fix it!”

Lightroom does not have the capabilities to fix this photo. So into Photoshop… 4 layers to start, defocus one, darken it, do shape shifting of the face on another layer, haircut on another layer, skin smoothing on another, sharpen eyes on another…. Then paint them layer masks until something happens…. Oh yeah I forgot the big one “lighting effects” on a layer saved the day from too flat a light… and the wrong color… the light was bouncing off a red wall totally queering the whole picture… take a look. (pictures 3, 4, 5, and 6 for the final).

You will notice on the bottom of the final picture I have included a gray scale. This is because most people have PC’s and have no clue as to how to calibrate the color, adjust themonitor or whether they have a 6 bit or 8 bit monitor. So I ask them how the grayscale looks if there is some kind of argument. I usually get a silent response…. and probe some more to find out the gray has turned green (out of whack 6 bit monitor) and it’s too dark to see separation in the lower shades… So I say it looks perfect on my end that;s as good as we can do… adjust your computer… see here too: browsers and photography

We made more than 6000 photographs in the 5 day convention at 4 venues, including the Washington State Convention Center, Museum of Flight, and the Seattle Sheraton… plus numerous party locations.

Poorly engineered marketing plan #1:

Mike tries to become famous signing autographs of the published MacPherson Photos…

The only strategy left (to becoming famous) is to get sued by MacPherson for diluting her trademark, or causing confusion between our “brands” so that when the public thinks of her they automatically and intrinsically think of me too. What do you think? Can this happen?

We needed a front page photo for the INTA daily newspaper at their 131st convention. Mind numbing images one person at a microphone after another came into view all day… And even this seminar on how to make a presentation went bad with the sound system failing and people scattered all over the stage…. Not to mention the really poor background, fire extinguisher, and doors (that I took out).

Then it occurred to me that if we could just get all the participants to play along for 5 minutes after their presentation we could condense the whole thing into one shot and sucessfully tell their story.

You need a cover shot… it’s a bad day right… no sun… Well the camera didn’t see it that way…. after a little work-over in LR and PS. Note: I added nothing to the photo… no fake sky or any such thing… This is all raw multilayer processing with masks to change the color temperature, exposures, gradients, retouching, and clarity between 3 different layers.